Genma's View
by Stratagemini
Summary: A story about the training trip, as told by Genma Saotome


Genma's View Chapter 1 By Evil Stratagemini  
  
I am not a crook, wait... wrong speech... I do not own Ranma 1/2, Even if I did, would you believe me if I said so? I am not making this for money, after all who would pay for a fanfic? And finally don't sue me, I have no money, and most of my stuff is worthless to sane people. With all that out of the way let's proceed to the Fanfic!  
  
*****  
  
My name is Genma Saotome, and I am a failure as a father.  
  
I wasn't always this miserable drunken wretch you see before you. I wasn't always pathetic. Let me tell you about when my son was first born. My wife Nodoka was nine months pregnant, and her water had just broken. We rushed to the hospital in our neighbor's car (not having one of our own), and I was scared out of my wits. I mean my beautiful wife of five years was in pain, she was gasping and her face was red, I had no idea what to do.  
  
We got to Tokyo General okay, and the doctor's rushed her to the maternity ward. For 7 hours she was in horrendous pain and it terrified me to no end. I had never had a child before and neither had she, but I knew 7 hours was a long delivery time. When the clock struck 10:50 Ranma was born, my first glimpse of him was a bloody blue infant, something that looked very little like the child my wife and I would grow to love, but the nurse dried him off and wrapped him in a blanket and when he finally gained some color in his skin handed him to my wife. The look in her eyes made it all worthwhile. As the doctor examined my hand (Nodoka had crushed it in delivery) I leaned in to kiss my wife and son. Her smile was radiant as she beamed at the young child she held in her arms, and when the doctor asked her what his name would be, she replied "Ranma, Saotome Ranma, after his father." That was one of the happiest days in my life, as I stood there smiling at my wife and son, I promised myself that he would succeed where I failed, that his life would be better than the life my father gave me. And that's where things all started to go horribly wrong.  
  
*****  
  
When Ranma was four I decided to train him in the Art, to make him the martial artist that I never was. It worked for a year, but then his mother started taking more of an interest. She started interfering with Ranma's training, stopping him from achieving his true potential. I was a fool, I wanted the best for my son, and I wanted him to be the best. I still regret my actions to this day; they stole ten years with my wife from me and a loving mother from my son. But I was a fool then, and I wrote up that damned Seppuku contract, a suicide pact for Kami's sake! I gave it to my son, my only son, and with the ink he finger painted all over it. We left that night, without a word to my wife leaving nothing but that damned contract to replace us, and causing no end of troubles for my son.  
  
*****  
  
I had the best of intentions, I never intended to be gone for ten years, but I'm a perfectionist with regards to my son, he was never good enough, never "Manly" enough. So for ten years we trained. Ten years straight you ask? No. I had my son go to school, using what money I could earn doing what odd jobs I could to get him into a good private school, no public school was good enough for my boy.  
  
For one year every thing went smoothly, but then something happened. Nodoka had somehow gotten wind of where we were staying, and was on the look out for us searching our neighborhood. We had to leave. As soon as the month was through and school let out Ranma and I were off to Kansai. When we arrived I once again enrolled Ranma in a private school. Every day he we would be up at dawn and practicing, then he would be off to school for the day and I would go to my work as a construction worker. It was during this job that I developed the Yama-sen-ken.  
  
When Ranma came home from school we would head out to the park. I would train, perfecting my new school of the Thousand Mountain Fist and Ranma, well he got into trouble. How you ask? Well I'll tell you. There was a Yattai that was run by an old man and his daughter that usually set up in this park, the daughter's name was Ukyou Kounji, the man's was Ichiro Kounji. The whole thing was started with Ranma snatching an Okonomiyaki fresh off the grill, I guess he was hungry or something, he would have gotten away cleanly and that would have been the end of it, if not for Ukyou.  
  
You see Ukyou was practicing her family style of martial arts Okonomiyaki just a few feet from Ranma when he stole the food, and she attacked him, hoping to use her training to stop the thief. Once more this would have been the end of it, if not for Ranma's winning so spectacularly. He defeated Ukyou with no hands all without dropping his food. Not that impressive you say? Humph! I'll have you know that my boy was doing flip kicks and 4 foot jumps in that fight, The Saotome Ryu is an aerial after all. Well Ichiro was so impressed with my son that he gave him the Okonomiyaki free of charge, and thus began a daily ritual. Every day Ranma and I would go to the park, and every day he would slip away to commit more thievery against the Kounji's. Everyday Ukyou would catch him, and every day Ranma would defeat her. Sometimes they got into little adventures like that gambling king fiasco, and sometimes they just talked.  
  
This went on for nearly a month, until Ukyou approached her father about an engagement to my boy. Now I don't know why she did it, I don't know why Ichiro agreed, but the next day, Ichiro told my boy that he wanted to speak to me. Ranma led him to where I was practicing, and Ichiro approached me about the engagement. Now I didn't remember the engagement to the Tendo's I was drunk when I made it, and all that stuff I said about him having prior arrangements was just so much hot air. When Kounji told me about the dowry however well, a Yattai is more than a New York hotdog stand; it's a whole miniature restaurant. You're wondering what happened to the yattai? Well we had to leave it behind once we went to china a few years later, but it helped tremendously until then. It was another week until I heard Nodoka was catching on to us again, we left for Osaka Ranma riding on the yattai and me pulling it behind me. What's that you ask? What happened to the whole Ukyou vs. Okonomiyaki question? Never happened, I made it up to avoid another beating. What you think I like pain?  
  
*****  
  
In Osaka I made the biggest mistake of my career as a sensei. The Neko-Ken. When I first came upon the technique it was like a dream come true, if Ranma learned the Neko-Ken then he would be an unstoppable martial artist, and we would finally be able to go home, or so I thought. My reasons for attempting the technique when it clearly would hurt my son? Well that's a simple answer. When I trained under my master every technique that we learned we learned through pain, the more painful the training the more effective the technique. We learned by having the technique used on us, and what better way of learning a fighting style based on cats then to be attacked by them? Yeah I know it doesn't make that much sense, but I was more excited than a child with a new toy and as they say hindsight is always 20/20.  
  
So, you ask, why did I repeat it? Well, as amazing as my son is it at the martial arts, he doesn't always learn a technique the first time he sees it. The fear wasn't evident at first and I thought his complaining was just that, the complaints of a child. I guess I should have read the whole thing, but it was one mistake, a mistake that gave my son a horrible Ailurophobia true, but a mistake none the less, I mean it's not as if I threw him to the lions.  
  
The little old lady? Well she was just a nearly blind old lady. Ranma didn't love her, she was just a warm lap to lie down in, a warm lap that hadn't thrown him into a pit of starving cats.  
  
*****  
  
We left Osaka later that week, something about charges of pet napping, animal cruelty, and child abuse. We headed for Kyoto, and we stayed there until Ranma was 13. It was there he met Ryouga Hibiki. I didn't know much about him, in fact I only met him once, but the reason Ranma didn't wait 4 days for him? I knocked him out and dragged him to China. Oh come now do you really think one fight would have settled matters for that boy? The reason he was mad in the first place was the fact that my son beat him day after day in the cafeteria. It was in Kyoto that I met the Kumons. I was busy developing the Umi-sen-ken, and when I ran across the Kumon dojo, I was in a generous mood. You see these techniques were built upon attacking the body like you would a house, and as a result they could be used both as martial arts techniques and arts of thievery. The crumbling Kumon Dojo struck a chord in me I guess; I don't really know why I gave them the Yama-sen-ken scroll. But I did, and I hoped that it would help them more than it did me.  
  
When we left Kyoto, Nodoka was once again catching up to us; we went as I already said, to China. In china we wandered about for a year, visiting old Shao-Lin temples and forgotten martial arts training grounds, until that one fateful day. Ranma had just turned 15 a month ago, and I had gotten him a birthday present, his first Chinese shirt/kung fu pants combo. He didn't wear it much at first, preferring the freedom of movement of his gi to the elegant style of the Chinese clothing, but all that was about to change.  
  
I had gotten the tour book from a travel agency, I had been in there determining where to go next, and I had seen it, like a sign from the Kami, a guide of the most dangerous training grounds in china. The Kami have a sick sense of humor. I snatched it up as quickly as I could, no not stole, it was a free pamphlet, how could I have stolen it? Anyway, I'm not a total fool, even though I can't read Chinese, I can understand it perfectly well, and so can my son for that matter. I hired someone to read me the pamphlet; unfortunately he skimmed over the more "Fantastic" parts. Not that I would have believed the booklet even if he hadn't, after all what sensible man believes in magic in this day and age? A smart one that's who, and I unfortunately was a fool.  
  
We hired a guide, and with him leading us we visited most of the training grounds on the map; The Dragons Cave, The Valley of the Supernaut, The Ancient Forest of Blades. At each place, the guide protested, and at each training ground nothing went wrong, so who were we to listen to the guide when we came to Jusenkyo? This place looked far less dangerous than all the others, and yet the man persisted in his warnings "No, Honored Sirs! Very bad you fall in springs!" We ignored his warnings as more of the same ravings. It was a case of the guide who called wolf you see. We might have been better off listening I think.  
  
When we reached The Pools of Sorrow I taunted my son up onto the bamboo poles and we started sparring. His skill had improved vastly over the last year, and he managed to knock me into a pool, the Saomaoniichuan I believe it was called, the spring of drowned panda. I didn't notice, after all the panda and I were about the same height, and the springs adjusted your center of balance instantly. I had wondered why my Gi top was so tight, and why my vision was better than it ever had been, but I put those questions off to answer later, after I had beaten my son. Ranma went into a state of mild shock at my appearance, can you blame him? I was a giant panda, and it seemed to him that I was trying to kill him. I succeeded in knocking him into a spring, the Nyaniichuan, or spring of drowned girl. My son was shocked, after all one second he's sparring with me and winning, and the next a giant panda comes out of nowhere and tries to kill him, it was understandably a bit of a shock. It was after I saw what the springs did to my son that I thought to examine myself, and I was shocked at what I saw. After all how many times in your life do you look down at your hands and see not human fingers, but claws, not hands at all but paws.  
  
Just as the guide was shouting something at us, I can't remember what it was now, my son exploded. No not literally! He became overcome by his rage and began to chase me all around the valley and up the cliffs on its sides. I ran into quite a few people in an attempt to escape my son, after all I wasn't about to say excuse me while my son attempted to kill me. It was then I ran into that Ryouga boy, literally. When I finally escaped my homicidal son, the guide showed me how the curses could be reversed; and I went looking for food. I obtained a small black piglet, and the guide proceeded to boil it, what you say? Why not roast it? Well the guide was extremely cautious, he wasn't about to roast something that was caught at Jusenkyo, and it appeared he was right. When Ryouga was suddenly in hot water, where the pig should have been, and screaming about getting revenge on my son, I grabbed some hot water myself and transformed. I told him that Ranma would soon be going to Furinkan high; after all it was near my next stop, Nerima. He proceeded to thank me, and then get hopelessly lost.  
  
What? You won't sell me any more Sake? I'm obviously drunk enough? Well let me show you something. Hand me that cold water over there, good. Growf!  
  
*****  
  
Author's Note: Well how do you like it? I'm still not sure if I'll continue it or not, though if I do, I plan to take it well through volume 8 of the manga. Please Review, I need the help writing I think. 


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